Architect

John Pawson

1949 — · British

British architectural designer known as a defining voice of contemporary minimalism. Pawson founded his London studio in 1981 after time spent in Japan with Shiro Kuramata. His work — from the Calvin Klein flagship in New York to the Cistercian Monastery of Novy Dvur — distills architecture to proportion, light, surface and silence.

“Architecture as the rigorous removal of everything inessential — until only proportion, light and material remain.”